History

January 23, 2020

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s crass Marxist materialism

During a Martin Luther King Day discussion with the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., made clear that she is not just a democratic socialist but a Marxian one. Evie Fordham of Fox Business has written a helpful summary of the remarks, including Ocasio-Cortez’s concise explanation of the Marxist theory of the exploitation of labor: “No one ever makes a billion dollars. Continue Reading...

January 23, 2020

Drucker on Christianity and the ‘roots of freedom’

This is the seventh in a series of essays on Peter Drucker’s early works. In his 1942 book, The Future of Industrial Man, Peter Drucker pointed to the Christian anthropology of man as a promising building block for society. Continue Reading...

January 21, 2020

Bernie Sanders tweets a recipe for exacerbating the housing crisis

Note: An expanded version of this post was released as this week’s Acton Commentary. This week, Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Bernie Sanders, I-VT, tweeted the following reaction to a story from The Economist describing rising American rent payments: This is a crisis. Continue Reading...

January 15, 2020

If government can dream it, can it do it?

Oren Cass, author of The Once and Future Worker: A Vision for the Renewal of Work in America, has written a deeply confused response to Samuel Gregg’s essay ‘How Economic Nationalism Hurts Nations.’ Continue Reading...

January 13, 2020

Hayek, Catholic social teaching, and social justice

Last week David Deaval, Visiting Professor at the University of St. Thomas and 2013 Novak Award winner, wrote a very thoughtful essay on Fredrich Hayek, the question of social justice, and Catholic social teaching at the Imaginative Conservative. Continue Reading...

January 09, 2020

Gertrude Himmelfarb: Teacher of the Free and Virtuous Society

Since the passing of Gertrude Himmelfarb I have been reflecting on just how much she taught me through her voluminous historical scholarship. In this week’s Acton Line Podcast I interviewed Yuval Levin, Resident Scholar and Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at AEI, who was also her student. Continue Reading...

January 06, 2020

Capitalism, solidarity, and work: A view from the 16th century

Legal historian Wim Decock of the KU Leuven recently published a study of the economic thought of the Flemish Jesuit Leonardus Lessius (1554–1623). Last week the National Catholic Register posted an interview with Decock about his book and Lessius’s contribution to economics. Continue Reading...

January 03, 2020

The musical entrepreneurship behind the ‘Hallelujah’ Chorus

Although it was intended to be an Easter composition, the “Hallelujah” Chorus from Handel’s Messiah has become the musical diadem of the Christmas season. It has already in early January vanished from the radio, because the modern West pre-celebrates all its holidays. Continue Reading...

December 31, 2019

Gertrude Himmelfarb (1922-2019): The historian of moral revolution

I just heard some devastating news. Gertrude Himmelfarb, historian, moralist, wife, and mother, has passed. David Brooks has written a touching obituary detailing the life and legacy of this fascinating woman: Economists measure economic change and journalists describe political change, but who captures moral change? Continue Reading...

December 18, 2019

Turning points in Catholic social teaching

In a recent Acton Line podcast I began by asking Father Robert Sirico the very large question, what is Catholic social teaching and why is it important today? He answered that the Church has always had a social teaching but that when we usually discuss Catholic social teaching today we begin with Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum. Continue Reading...

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